Massive Mirage Nerfs incoming August 23rd preview

[Levetty.1279]

Quote

Mesmer

In the August 2 update, we reviewed and updated the greatsword and sword core weapons. In this update we're increasing Chronomancer's alacrity duration from Stretched Time and increasing the damage of Tides of Time, the fifth shield skill. This will give a slight bump to boon-focused Chronomancer builds.

We also wanted to reduce some of the longer cooldowns on staff, but Mirage's high-performing condition damage builds made that tricky. We're making very small cuts to condition damage on Mirage's axe and staff ambush to maintain parity with other professions' builds. The reduced cooldown on the Phantasmal Warlock and Chaos Armor weapon skills will improve the Mesmer's leveling experience when using a staff.
 

Staff

• Phantasmal Warlock: (PvE only) Recharge reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Chaos Armor: (PvE only) Recharge reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.

Utility Skills

• Blink: (PvE only) Recharge reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

Chronomancer

• Stretched Time: Alacrity on well cast increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Tides of Time: (PvE only) Damage multiplier increased from 1.2 to 1.5.

Mirage

Axe

• Lingering Thoughts: (PvE only) Torment duration decreased from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Imaginary Axes: (PvE only) Torment duration decreased from 4 seconds to 3 seconds.

Staff

• Chaos Vortex (Staff Ambush): (PvE only) Might stack count reduced from 8 to 5, and might duration reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Torment, bleeding, and confusion duration reduced from 8 seconds to 7 seconds.

 

TLDR Big nerf to Axe and Staff Damage Mirage and the boon output of Alac Mirage but they are "making up for it" by reducing the cd on the two most pointless skills on Staff.

 

Yeah I don't know either.

 

Oh btw that AFK Mech DPS build is getting buffed.

[Monchichi.9301]

I know, wtf?

 

They really want us to play alac on chrono, then make chrono better. Don't nerf mesmer's only other boon option.

[phokus.8934]

Because Solar hates axe and likes Staff.

[Mike.7983]

Buff mech nerf everything else, at what point will this be renamed Mech wars 2,  seriously who ever is in charge of class balance failed horribly again.  Rip apart a fun mirage build and add more dps to  auto spam 1's mech to pull even more dps

[Salt Mode.3780]

29 minutes ago, phokus.8934 said:

Because Solar hates axe and likes Staff.

Staff is also getting a nerf.

Again all PvE nothing PvP or WvW how dreadfully boring.

[Gibson.4036]

Because Axe Mirage was just dominating PVE.

[mungozen.2379]

Does Scepter see use anywhere these days?  It hasn’t been touched in a long while and AFAIK isn’t in any meta or off meta builds. 

[Endaris.1452]

Yeah, that's really a strong nerf veiled as a trade-off.

Worst of all, chrono still isn't getting anywhere. Absolute trainwreck on the mesmer side of things even though a decent amount of non-mesmer things are actually good in the patch.

[Mell.4873]

The Alacrity side should be fine it's more the might generation on Mirage. It might force more people into Inspiration Mirage to pump out boons but that combo will not net you the 28k DPS. 

[AshkyLicious.4729]

As it wasnt already enough stressful to make sure you keep up Might all the time, now they even made it worse! This will make Staff Mirage so much more tedious to play in pve. And why do they have to nerf Axe too out of a sudden from nowhere!?

The funny part is that Anets says its just a small nerf on mirages condi dps... a small nerf?... Seriously? Its so clear that they want Mirage to be the kitten spec of Mesmers now!

They shouldve just left Mirage alone, it was actually doing ok in PvE!

Dont get why Anet want feedback for their patch preview posts, when they never intend to change anything anyway. These posts are a waste of everybodys time in the end!

Edited August 13, 2022 by AshkyLicious.4729

[Suyheuti.1732]

Thank you Anet for "balancing". It will be balanced with junkyard after all. I dont say another nerfs but nerfing "imaginary axes" is brutal. I was expecting buffing illusions traitline and you nerf main dps source of the axe. And you didnt even fix the ambush bug for a long time. 

 

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, AshkyLicious.4729 said:

They shouldve just left Mirage alone, it was actually doing ok in PvE!

45 minutes ago, Suyheuti.1732 said:

Thank you Anet for "balancing". It will be balanced with junkyard after all. I dont say another nerfs but nerfing "imaginary axes" is brutal.

I'm willing to bet the did this because of the DPS numbers. On Snowcrow alone Mesmer holds some of the top positions but that is fare since it is one of the harder DPS playstyles. Its far more spamming and situational rather than a strict rotation, like the new Untamed is.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Curunen.8729]

Ok "pve only"... So can we also finally get iMage down to like 20s in "pve only"? Surely a quick thing to do?

Staff 3+4 welcome. Blink confusing, taking into account if traited plus alacrity.

Mirage nerfs, not sure how chaos vortex nerf counterbalances 3+4 buff. Seems excessive, ok to encourage boon duration but I think too much swing.

Axe, do not understand - it should be rewarding to play, already pulled teeth out when the power coefficients were nerfed...

Edited August 13, 2022 by Curunen.8729

[Demon Pie.2634]

At this point are you even surprised?

 

I'd sooner expect the sky to fall tomorrow than ArenaNet developers to start taking their job seriously. 

 

Their goal is to kitten off the player base of every single class one by one except for Mech and guardian.  We just happened to be next in line this time.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Demon Pie.2634

[Endaris.1452]

18 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

On Snowcrow alone Mesmer holds some of the top positions but that is fare since it is one of the harder DPS playstyles.

The Axe bench specifically is absolutely insane, wizardry at its best with managing all the animations so perfectly while abusing all the low cooldown condi skills to the maximum. So yeah, if any class deserves to be up there it's axe mirage for sure...

[Salt Mode.3780]

2 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

The Axe bench specifically is absolutely insane, wizardry at its best with managing all the animations so perfectly while abusing all the low cooldown condi skills to the maximum. So yeah, if any class deserves to be up there it's axe mirage for sure...

I mean I'm pretty sure in a actual fight scenario unless the boss in not moving and there is nothing to dodge or step out of to do your rotation, I doubt actual numbers can stay that high consistently. I don't understand why ANET insist on braindead I wouldn't even call it rotations and nerfing actual hard rotations with high numbers.

Like do they even understand how hard it is to pull those numbers in actual fights?

[godfat.2604]

The leak does mention that complexity should not be an excuse to have higher potential, meaning that they indeed don’t care about the ceiling for the actual average fights. Feeling like my higher average ping (200~300) is a sin.

While I completely disagree with this perspective, it’s at least consistent to what they have done to Catalyst. Maybe next year when they finally realized that Mirage was long extinct, they would buff it again like how they buffed Chronomancer which would likely not do much as we observed. It’s hard not to be pessimistic. Or maybe things can be worse so I was still too optimistic, as the history did show, sometimes they can always do even worse when I already did expect the worst.

[godfat.2604]

Also, they’re not honest about why they nerf Mirage, which is also not surprising.

[otto.5684]

On 8/12/2022 at 8:46 PM, phokus.8934 said:

Because Solar hates axe and likes Staff.

Or maybe he hates both, cuz the nerfs to staff are way larger.

[phokus.8934]

4 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

Or maybe he hates both, cuz the nerfs to staff are way larger.

He abandoned Mesmer.

[godfat.2604]

Or how can Mirage threaten the real child Virtuoso? 🤔